In the age of The Last of Us and Fallout, and hell even Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie it’s easy to think that film and TV have finally nailed the video game adaptation. Much like how it took a while for comic book movies to really get to grips with adapting the source material. Even watching Jim Carrey prat about in two fat suits while chasing a CGI blue hedgehog captures the manic energy of the games. But, for all of those, there’s the Five Nights at Freddy’s, the Minecraft Movies, and yes, another botched Silent Hill.
With Return to Silent Hill, “Visionary” director Christophe Gans (who directed the original 2006 adaptation and little else since) returns to follow M.J. Bassett’s 2012 follow-up Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. While Silent Hill loosely followed the plot of the first game, and Revelation the third, this time Gans turns his attention to the 2001 Konami game Silent Hill 2, widely regarded as the best in the series and one of the best video games of all time (so good it got remastered last year).
The film vaguely follows the same story: James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine) receives a letter from his deceased partner, Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson), and returns to the now desolate town of Silent Hill, where all hell appears to have descended, and his guilt begins to manifest.
From the start, it’s clear that Gans is doing the same thing he did with the first film. It’s all about taking the things people like from the games and plopping them on screen so people can go “oooh.” So yes, Pyramid Head is back—but without the dark, self-flagellating subject. Yes, the bobble-y nurses are back—but without the burgeoning sexual objectification. Yes, the Akira Yamaoka score is back, but it’s dulled by being flung into scenes with lacklustre CGI.
For all the guff made about using actual actors in makeup and mime artists, Pablo Rosso’s cinematography is horrifically bad. Most mid shots of Irvine look like they were shot on a green screen with him superimposed. The reliance on poorly rendered CGI moths borders on the hilarious. It’s 2002 level CGI, to the point that, had Dwayne Johnson’s Scorpion King burst through a door to a one-note Irvine’s terror, it wouldn’t have seemed out of place.
Gans recreates shots from the game, specifically the famous bathroom mirror shot, but it’s an empty point and cheer. Moreover, the film then goes out of its way to recreate moments from The Shining and for, some bizarre reason, Oldboy.
The performances vary from “meh” to “please kill meh.” Irvine does his best to elevate “what is happening” above one note, but it’s not his fault. Anderson actually does a valiant job of making Mary someone we can fall for and the enigmatic Maria into something more than an outdated cliche of a hooker. The rest of the acting isn’t bad bad, including a discount Tilda Swinton.
The worst thing is, Silent Hill 2 is the type of story that could make for a great psychological horror film. In the hands of a Phillipou brothers or an Ari Aster this could have been one for the ages. But Gans doesn’t get the appeal of the original game. It’s not the monsters or the gore that audiences adored; it’s the peeling back one man’s terror to reveal the tortured guilt that is consuming his reality. In the right hands, this could be Jacob’s Ladder for the A24 crowd. Instead, we get a bland, red-grey coloured movie with weird moth people and a boring as sin cult subplot that strips away any of the darker edges of James’s story.
Unless you’re a die-hard fan of bad movies, don’t bother returning to Silent Hill.
Return to Silent Hill is in cinemas now.
